Dead End Life
by Facemash
Summary: Second person Johnny Cade.  "When your friends drink you feel wary of them, distrustful.  But that is always the look in your eyes."


You live on the streets because you have to. There is no one at your house, and when there is they are just drunk and violent. They don't care about you, as much as you want them to. You curl up at night on park benches because it's better than getting hit.

Most of your friends are criminals, ranging from petty thieves to out and out psychopaths. But they are the only people who love you. Everyone in this city is against each other, all the rival gangs from the poor sections and all the rich socs. Everyone is against you, that's what it feels like sometimes. All you have is your friends.

All your teachers think you're dumb, and you think that maybe they're right, since you can't read so well. Since you stayed back a year. Since your best friend is two years younger than you but in the same grade and still does better, and you can feel yourself not getting things. Sometimes it's because you can't pay attention because you're tired or hungry or aching from the latest beating. Sometimes it's because the letters in the words get all jumbled up. Sometimes you don't know why, you just don't get it, but you get what that means. You'll never go to college, you might not even graduate high school. You'll never get a good job. You'll probably end up working at a gas station or being a janitor or something like that, something that doesn't require thinking.

You know you have a dead end life, but you don't know what to do about it. You're so jealous of your best friend, the one who is smart and has all the opportunities you'll never have, but he is younger and you aren't always sure that he realizes that.

Sometimes, between fearing your folks or resenting them or longing for their love and approval, sometimes you try to coldly understand them. Maybe your father was like you and didn't get school and wasn't good at it, and maybe your mom fell in love with him for all the wrong reasons, thinking he was cool or something, and the very things that attracted her to him in the first place, his temper and his dangerousness, have screwed you all over in the end. Maybe he married her because he had to, because she was pregnant with you, and they both thought their lives were ruined. No wonder they resent you. And maybe when it was all falling apart your old man started drinking to ease the pain.

Your pain could use some easing. The pain of all the beatings, being hit with belts and two-by-fours. Being ignored, being gone for days and no one cares, no one says a thing.

You avoid alcohol, although almost everyone in your neighborhood drinks. You avoid it because you can't stand the smell of it. It reminds you of your old man and the slur in his voice and the way he shouts your name. It reminds you of the look in his eyes and the way he grabs the collar of your jacket and won't let go. When your friends drink you feel wary of them, distrustful. But that is always the look in your eyes.

Your friends are there and look out for you, they say they can't get along without you. You squint your eyes when they say that and wonder what they mean. Of course they could. Anyone could get along without you. You're useless and worthless, you know that. That's been proven to you over and over again. Your parents don't need you. Your teachers have all given up on you. The socs have tried to put you in your place. Deep in your heart you suspect your friends of having just taken pity on you. You're rarely happy or even just okay. You feel the pain of this life every day and can't take it. That's why you want to kill yourself.

But you don't, somehow. You just go on, avoiding your house and your folks, sleeping outside or over at friends' houses. Smoking too much, feeling that nicotine buzz that you like. Going to see silly beach movies at the drive ins or more serious movies in the movie theater. Bumming rides or watching drag races or rodeos, getting lost in the violence and the speed. Playing pinball at the bowling alley or watching the stars in the lot, laying on your back and stretching out, shivering in the cold.

You don't think this place is for you, and sometimes you want to run away, but you don't. You've never been out of this neighborhood and wouldn't know where to go. And who's to say that another place might not be worse? You understand your suicide impulse as anger turned inward but you don't know how to change it. You don't know how to be mad at anyone else.

You do admire one of your friends above the others, and your smart best friend calls it hero worship, which it probably is. He is the most violent and the craziest of all the people you know, have ever met, and you want to be like him more than anything. You want to be like him because he can take anything, he doesn't have parents that are any better than yours and he doesn't care. He didn't do any better in school than you did and it doesn't faze him. Teachers' opinions and his folks' opinions don't matter to him, like it matters to you. He doesn't care and nothing hurts him. You wish you could be like that.

One day you get beaten really bad and decide then that you'll carry a six inch switchblade in your back pocket. You see the scar on your cheek and can feel the bruises along your body as they heal. But something is broken so deep inside and whatever it is will never heal, and you start to wonder who you're carrying the knife for, them or you.


End file.
